


What Goes On In That House

by AudreyV



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Bonnie is actually strong AF, But she makes a lot of terrible choices, Complicated Relationships, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad Ending, post 3x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 12:35:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8578747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreyV/pseuds/AudreyV
Summary: More than a decade in that house had ruined Bonnie.  She wasn't the only one.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbetaed because I have so many half-written fics that I didn't finish in time for the next episode, only to have them completely derailed by the new info revealed. So I am putting this up now before we find out tomorrow that it's canon incompatible! (Please please let it be canon incompatible for a dozen different reasons.)
> 
> Also, I've been sad and frustrated since last week's election, so I pushed myself tonight to channel it into writing something. The result is the mega-angst you'll find below.

Bonnie was naked when she started to exist again. She was sitting on the cold bathroom tile, hugging her knees to her chest. She blinked up at the steam pouring out of the shower, then watched the water swirling down the drain for several long moments as she rebalanced herself. She wasn't sure how she got there, but she knew she was in Annalise’s bathroom, alone. 

The last thing that was clear was sitting on Annalise’s porch. Waiting. Thinking about Frank twenty feet away in the living room. Wanting to be there next to him, holding his hand, funneling as much of her own strength into him as she could because she knew he’d need it to face Annalise. 

But Annalise couldn’t come home to her at Frank’s side, and Bonnie didn’t trust herself. If she had to look at his grief-stricken face, she’d do something stupid like tell him to get in the car so they could leave all of this behind, and that wasn't what either of them truly wanted. 

She needed the three of them to be together again, like they were before it all went to hell. Before Wes killed Sam, except now Bonnie could see how much deeper the cracks went. In truth they were ruined long ago; she just didn’t know it at the time. 

\---

Bonnie was standing at the bottom of the stairs when Sam opened the front door and led a blank-faced Annalise in. She stepped aside and silently watched them go upstairs, then went back to her work. 

“I won’t ask how she is,” Bonnie said when Sam came back downstairs later that evening. “But please tell me if there’s anything I can help with.”

Sam shrugged and sank down onto the couch next to her. His eyes filled with tears and he shook his head. 

“I don’t even know how to comfort her, Bonnie.”

“You can’t. No one can.”

“Then what do I do?”

“Nothing.” Bonnie squeezed his hand and stood. “Is it okay if I go up?”

“Yeah. Don’t take it personally if she tells you to get the fuck out, though.”

\---

“Annalise?” Bonnie crept into the dark room. As her eyes adjusted she could just barely make out a human form wrapped in the comforter, prone on the bed. “It’s Bonnie.”

She waited for a response. When none came, she knelt next to the bed and rested her chin on it. 

“You haven’t said ‘I’m sorry,’” came a gruff mumble from under the blanket. “Everybody else has. They’re all so, so sorry about the baby.”

“I’m sorry is like handing a band aid to someone who’s been cut in half.”

The blanket cocoon shifted and dark eyes peered out at her. The turmoil in them, the raw rage and grief sliced through Bonnie. Before she could think better of it, she slipped into the bed next to Annalise and wrapped her arms around her. 

Bonnie felt Annalise tense and start to push her away, but then the dam cracked and Annalise was sobbing in her arms. Bonnie held on as tightly as she could until the shaking stopped. 

She didn't realize they'd fallen asleep until the dawn light was streaming in the windows. She found Sam asleep on the couch. A few days later he told her he was glad to have someone to share the weight of it all. 

Bonnie didn't expect to find herself in Annalise’s bed again, but soon half of the bed was “Bonnie’s side” several days a week. Annalise half-joked that Sam could tell by his wife's mood in the afternoon if he'd be sleeping in the guest room that night. 

It wasn't long before Bonnie stopped thinking any of it was strange.

\--

The night it happened, Annalise was sleeping fitfully after one too many glasses of vodka. Sam was out. Bonnie didn’t tell Annalise her husband wasn't spending his exiled nights in the guest room. She rationalized that he and Annalise were both grieving; if Annalise found chaste comfort in Bonnie’s arms, Sam deserved to find his solace too. 

That night she was in the kitchen when he came home, morose and sweaty. 

“Join me?” he asked, already filling two glasses with whiskey. Bonnie tried to decline but Sam added, “She's asleep. There's no harm in it” and she couldn't refute that. 

He sat close to her on the couch. He rested his arm along the back of it, then drifted it closer and closer to her. 

“She's lucky to have you,” Sam said. He toyed with the clasp of Bonnie’s necklace. His fingertips touched the skin at the nape of her neck and she stiffened. 

“Don't,” she said. She caught his hand and moved it away. 

“It's okay,” Sam murmured close to her ear. “She doesn't need to know.”

“Know what?” Bonnie forced her gaze up to his face. “Sam, I don't—”

“So you only like women, is that it?”

“What? No, I—”

“You can't tell me you've been sleeping beside my wife for months and she hasn't fucked you.”

Bonnie froze. Annalise hadn't, of course they hadn't. But Sam’s words shined light deep in her guilty heart, and she couldn't deny she wanted that. Luckily wanting wasn't doing, and she had the truth on her side. 

“She hasn’t.” Bonnie placed one of her hands gently on Sam’s chest. She forced herself to keep the touch gentle as she pushed him away. “Sam, you're drunk.”

He held her eyes for a long time, then shrugged. 

“Get back to her, then,” he said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. 

Bonnie climbed the stairs slowly. When she eased open the door, Annalise’s eyes were on her. 

“Where were you?”

“Getting some water. Talking with Sam.” Bonnie paused. She hovered near the door. “He thinks you and I have been screwing.”

Annalise laughed. “I was with a woman when I met him. I thought he was over worrying about my leaving him for one.” 

Bonnie shifted her weight from one foot to the other. 

“I didn't know that.”

“You do now.” Annalise's eyes traveled down her body and up again. “Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“No.”

Annalise must have heard something she liked in Bonnie’s voice, because she smiled, all teeth. 

“Good. Then get over here.”

\---

There was a knock at the bathroom door. Bonnie looked up at it but didn't move from the floor. 

“Bonnie? Bonnie, open the door.”

She glanced over at her clothes, discarded by the sink. She grabbed her pale grey sweater and started to pull it over her head. Her fingers touched something sticky. She looked down at the sweater and saw it was covered in dark blotches. 

“You need to open the door, Bonnie.” The doorknob rattled. 

She slowly pressed her fingertips to one large spot. It was starting to stiffen. When she pulled her hand away, the whorls of her fingerprint were dark with blood. 

Bonnie stripped the top off again and threw it as far away as she could. When she looked down at her chest, she saw a corresponding red streak where the stain on the sweater was. 

\---

“Leave it off.” 

“Why?”

“Dunno. Just like the way you look.”

“Right.” Bonnie rolled her eyes and pulled her shirt on. She knew this would end in disaster but she liked the way it felt right now. Getting drunk enough to fuck someone she worked with wasn’t her usual MO, but she had no regrets. 

“What happened to round two?” Frank asked petulantly, and she smiled at him.

Bonnie wasn’t the sort of girl who wanted a man to save her, but when Frank had blundered into the Keating kitchen the night before, she was grateful. Sam’s little manipulations and Bonnie’s lack of care if she went up in flames were a dangerous combination. She was happy to leave with Frank, follow him to a bar and then to his bed. 

“I’m pretty sure round two was this morning when you woke me before the sun was up.” Bonnie started to reach for her skirt but a hand on her arm stopped her. 

“Fine. Then call it round three. Or four. Whatever.”

“I thought you wanted breakfast,” she protested as he flung her shirt back across the room. 

“Won’t lie. I’m hungry, but not for pancakes.” 

“You’re awful.”

“You like it,” Frank said, and Bonnie couldn’t deny that she did. He stretched out next to her on the bed and he ran his fingers through her hair. His hand settled at the back of her neck as he leaned toward her, but when she froze he quickly moved it away. Frank's eyes were full of questions, but Bonnie shook her head. 

“I’m fine, I just don’t…” 

“It’s okay.” Frank stroked a path with his thumb from her cheek down to her lips. “I get it, you know. I mean sort of.”

Bonnie started to pull away, to hiss that she was sure he didn't, but something in his eyes stopped her. 

“You do?”

“Yeah. Bad stuff happened to me too.” He took her hand and moved her fingers along his collarbone. “Feel that lump? Broken collarbone that never healed right. Or broken too many times. I dunno which.”

“How many times did you break it?”

“Too many. And it wasn't me that broke it.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. You've probably never hurt a soul in your life. My dad’s the one who should be sorry.”

“Is he?” Bonnie asked.

“Yeah.” Frank paused in thought as his fingers twirled a lock of strawberry-blonde hair through them. “I made him sorry.”

Bonnie nodded. 

“Good,” she said. “My dad is only sorry he got caught.”

“It don’t help,” he said quietly. “I thought I’d feel better if I… but it don’t help. Maybe it’s different for you. Maybe one day you’ll find out he’s dead and you’ll feel relieved.”

“I’ve thought about it.” Bonnie tucked herself into Frank’s outstretched arms. “Someday, when I get that phone call… I’ll be free.” She felt Frank’s embrace tighten around her. 

“I hope I still know you when it happens. Either because we get stuck with each other or because the bastard drops dead next week.” His lips touched Bonnie’s temple.

“Breakfast?” he asked after a comfortable silence. 

“Don’t you want to—”

“Only if you do. I thought maybe breakfast and then round two. Give you a break before we get back into it.”

“That would be good.”

Frank kissed her again, then went to the kitchen. Bonnie listened to him banging pots and pans around as she stared at the cracked ceiling and wondered if there was enough of her to divide between all the people in that house and still keep something for herself. 

\---

Bonnie had killed a woman, but she'd never watched someone die. Rebecca had to be dealt with, but Annalise Keating’s blonde right hand took no pleasure in --ending her life. She did what needed to be done and then she turned away and waited for the stillness. 

Watching someone die was very different than merely hearing the struggling cease. In one moment there were three of them in the room, and in the next there were only two. Bonnie felt something warm and sticky on her cheek. She touched it and her fingers came back red. 

When she saw her father in his coffin, she felt free. Now she just felt unmoored, like a hot air balloon with one of the ropes snapped. 

She’d tried. It was stupid, trying, thinking she could change the outcome of the runaway train. But Bonnie had always been stupid.

She forced herself to look at the only other living person in the room. Piercing, terrified eyes locked with hers. Bonnie tried to say something but her voice was gone completely instead of just hoarse from screaming. 

\---

The water ran translucent red-brown as it swirled down the drain. Bonnie scrubbed her face for the third time and ignored the words that came through the door.  
When she emerged from the bathroom half an hour later, Annalise was sitting on the bed looking at her. Bonnie clutched the towel tighter around herself. 

“Find me something to wear and then we’ll figure out how to fix it,” she said calmly, even though she knew there were things that couldn’t be repaired with glue or a manufactured alibi.

“Okay.” Annalise stood to go to her closet, then stopped and turned to Bonnie. “I’m sorry it had to be this way.”

“It didn’t. And I’ll probably never forgive you for that.”

“If that’s true, why are you still here?”

“Because I used to think I deserved to be happy, and I used to think you deserved better than me." Bonnie forced a small smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. "And I couldn't have been more wrong.”


End file.
